In a perfect world, kids would always be raised by their parents in a happy and loving home.

Even if divorce happens, there are ways to make sure the kids have positive relationships with both parents.

Of course, that’s much harder if one parent moves far away.

That is what happened to the young man in this story, and now he’s stuck in the middle of a custody fight between mom and grandparents.

Read on to see the details.

AITA for making my mom’s life difficult by making her fight for custody?

My dad passed in June.

He had custody of me (16).

My mom lives in another state. She moved when I was 7 because her husband got a new job and wanted a better life for his kids.

Mom wanted to take me. She and dad battled it out in court.

What a difficult situation for a 7 year old.

I was asked what I wanted by a judge.

It was a really bad time for me.

I told the judge I wanted my mom but didn’t want to leave my dad, my friends or my family.

I told him I really didn’t want to go. She was really kind to me.

I don’t remember everything she said.

But I do remember her apologizing for me being in that position.

She decided to give dad custody of me and gave mom summer parenting time and weekly calls.

I begged mom not to leave. She told me she had to but wanted me to come with them.

I told her I didn’t want to leave dad behind but I didn’t want to be left behind.

She left and told me nothing much would change.

For a while the calls were great and all.

But then she started putting her her stepkids (who were under 5 when mom and her husband moved) on the phone after 2 minutes of us talking.

Mom needs to get her priorities in order.

The calls were meant to be for her and me. But she wanted me to “keep the bond” with her stepkids.

I never had a bond with them so the calls sucked and I started ending the calls when she would pass the phone to everyone else.

Mom never came back on the phone so I didn’t need to stay on the phone.

She’d correct me for it and I’d tell her I wanted to talk to her and not them.

The calls stayed on the court order but they were at most 5 minutes instead of 20 minutes.

Summers I spent 5-7 weeks with mom.

She’d act so excited to see me but we never really got time for just us.

Her stepkids were always added on because her husband would be at work and when he’d get home he’d join us.

I asked for time with just my mom and she’d ignore me.

I grew more resentful of it all.

How awful.

My dad passed right before I was due to fly out to mom’s.

I don’t want to live with her so I asked my grandparents if they could file for custody quickly.

There was an emergency hearing because of the situation and mom had to fly out for it.

She wanted custody. She told the judge.

But the judge said I could temporarily stay with my grandparents until a formal court date.

Court is a little over a week away.

I’m sure mom would love to have him.

My mom has tried to convince me to move in with her.

She told me I should be with my family and my parents.

I told her she’s my only parent left but she chose her husband and his kids over me before so why should I choose her now.

She told me I should understand that she didn’t want to end her marriage over a good opportunity and how I could have gone with them.

She told me she couldn’t let his kids down after she became mom to them.

She did it to him first.

I told her she could separate me from one of my parents.

Then I pointed out she prioritized them over me.

She told me it’s not a reason to make her life harder by having to fight for custody of her son who already lost his other parent.

She told me to be fair about this.

AITA?

What a heartbreaking situation, but it sounds like the son knows what he wants.

Let’s take a look at what the people in the comments had to say.

Here is a divorced parent’s perspective.

Upending his life would make a bad situation worse.

This commenter says mom had the wrong priorities.

This person says his feelings are valid.

Yeah, at his age it really is up to him.

This mother made her priorities clear years ago.

It only matters what’s fair to him.

If you enjoyed that story, read this one about a mom who was forced to bring her three kids with her to apply for government benefits, but ended up getting the job of her dreams.